The Revenants
by SaintJacTheGingerNinja
Summary: After a six hour operation, Jac, Jonny, Mo and Sacha walk back onto a deserted and bloodied Darwin ward. It's a total wasteland, but what has happened to make it so? Are there any survivors? Insistent that there is, they battle through horrific scenes to find any chance of life, of their colleagues. But, that's not all they find roaming the halls. Janny/Mocha/Hanssen/Serena/Others
1. Chapter 1

**Hello again. This is a strange, little multi-fic that I have come up with. I'm not sure whether to continue it, so I have only written the one chapter as a sort of tester, if you will. There may be some mistakes in it because I wrote it around the pool, (I've been on holiday), and I have just written it straight up. I am aware that the ending part is rushed, but I really wanted to get it up for you all. **

**So, as always, enjoy and please review! :)**

* * *

Monstrous suds mutilated her gnarled, slender hands as she allowed them to drive across her arms and onto her razor edged elbows; they plummeted vigorously to their deaths, their lives short and purpose unmet. Cleanliness perhaps they achieved, yet those mentally envisaged specks of blood that had stippled her extremities were still to be vanquished. The cornucopia of guilt, (it could be claimed), was erected from those red smears - the guilt for another's existence, how her patient was snatched from her clutches and not allowed to fester like the fine wine she no doubt would have loved to consume that night. The water smacked the sink and drowned her hands, before cultivating someplace else, moving hosts like a fattened parasite.

In the midst of her miasmic visor, she found her voice. "Close up, Mr Levy." The reality of defeat had deemed her tone barren, but the lack of authority did not hinder her colleagues' grimly willing compliance - after all, he understood, whereas there were some that could not. Her mental wasteland was just too unpleasant.

"Mr Levy?" This time a female buzzed in her ear. "What's with the formalities Jac? Is his supposed friendship too much for the psychopath?"

Her body forcefully snapped to attention with military likeness, a reflex action that bypassed her spinal cord; quick didn't begin to cover it - in mere seconds her mouth spat out a torrent of abuse, projecting her dander with misguided words.

"This is a hospital, not a social club, Maureen."

"But-"

"But _nothing_! I've not only had to deal with that skinny, Scottish nurse, but with your insane, twitterpated, doe-eyed, stolen glances towards Levy that made me want to search for the bloody sick bucket, for just over six hours. _Six_! So, shut it before Hitchcock takes you up on your words and decides to make a film about me." With an air of finality, her last point blasted out as she threw herself through the double doors, followed by her theatre team, continuing into the elongated corridor between destruction and her supposed oasis.

"Isn't Hitchcock dead?" The latter of that brisk remark, although donning the unspoilt innocence of a newborn, saw the consultant bristle.

"He's not the only one." It was a steely reminder of what had been lost, or rather taken - a feat that could not possibly be excused.

"Oh come on. So Jenkins was passed it?" The registrar twisted the ultimate door handle and slit her jacket. "It's not the end of the world."

The door clattered on its hinges, sealing them in.

The slow drawl of machines was the only vestige of what was once a fully functional ward; now they kneaded the silence with an eerie spattering of notes, telling of who they had lost.

But not what they had become.

The walls were sprayed with webbed handprints, reddened and sometimes smeared as people slid where they were slain. Flittered paperwork began its conquest of the space; it was a disarray, a twister of files, their chests bloated in an act to seem larger.

Darwin had been transformed, transfigured, tortured to the brink of ruin. It was nothing more than a derelict warzone, and they were no more than enemy soldiers who had happened to stumble upon forbidden territory.

And, suddenly, amongst the wasteland, was a lone figure.

Head twisted roughly to the side with the appearance of a snapped doll yet without the fragility of such a plaything, she stood. He neck pulsated with unexplained heart rhythms for her stomach frothed with a concoction of blood, bone and organ, and yet-

And yet she was moving.

Arms outstretched, she teetered on rotted legs, toenails protruding through crock holes, jaw hooked and rooted on some invisible meal. Her skin crispy, her eyes bulged as she sluggishly nudged them in their sockets towards the pack.

A low moan forced its way up her contracting oesophagus as she doused her chin with drooping saliva - she had lost control, she had lost her awareness, she had lost herself, in death.

* * *

_Earlier that morning..._

The lab was the epicentre of medicine. It housed potions that would scarcely be seen in movies - they were such odd, unconventional shapes, that they rang alarm bells when looked upon. They danced in a scintillating pallet of colours, propelled by silver spatulas, and, when observed by intellectual company, they would swing at the sides of their glass prison with limitless vigour.

Only one man was hailed as the ruler of this small kingdom. Ordinarily, this man's eyes were perpetually clouded with an unchanging state of concentration, yet now they were lit - a consequence of personal victory. He edged his creation into the light. It was exteriorly insignificant, with a colour and consistency similar to that of sugar, however, internally, he presumed, beautiful - a compact cure.

"Now that's what you call medical science," Luc murmured proudly.

He deposited it inside a russet paper bag, intent on keeping his findings latent until they could be further developed. Tucking it into the soft palm of his hand within the small groove, his fingers fitted a solid wall around the saviour substance; there was a dull ache where came his strength, yet he dared not flex in fear of damage. And with that same ritual, he was off, in need of something to quench his thirst.

* * *

_Some time later that morning..._

"Home made brownies, ladies?" Both nurses, the ginger and the blonde, needed no more persuasion than those simple words. Within minutes, some delicacies had been scooped into arm crooks, some devoured.

A witness to the slaughter sulked to his partner, jutting out his lips and folding his arms. "Aw man. We've missed the goodies now," Jonny whined sadly.

"Ah good, maybe now I'll start to look like the pregnant one," Jac quipped, allowing herself to smirk.

With a frown, the nurse imparted, "Hey, don't diss this miss or his sugar fix. I need it to cope with you, you moody cow." Off her glare, he collected himself. "Joking. It was a joke." He knew she couldn't remain fractious.

"Just shut it and buy me coffee."

With a salute, Jonny barked, "Yes Ma'am."

As one, the cheery couple slid into their personal space and across certain boundaries.

Mo threw up an eyebrow. "Ma'am? She packing you off to Afghanistan for parental preparation?"

Jonny whisked away her accusations with a swift hand gesture. "Nah, I'll need more than combat training to fend off our wee mite."

Jac interrupted, "Yes and I'll need a bomb disposal unit to stop the _thing_ from crying."

After a glance towards Sacha, Mo countered, "I'm pretty sure it's not going to pop out splurging tentacles like you've shagged Dr Octopus."

Jac turned towards the man nursing a cup of hot chocolate. "I wasn't talking about the foetus."

The registrar's eyes began to slide towards the beverage, and, thus, Jonny offered up the drink, which Mo unenthusiastically declined.

The nurse frowned. "Fit club taking over ya?"

Sacha cursed his colleague's temptations. "Don't. The first rule of fit club is don't talk about fit club."

And then a shrill ringing punctured the sojourn of words that they had let linger as a sign that they were required.


	2. Chapter 2

**Here is another chapter. I'm sorry that it is short. To those who reviewed, consider the language slightly less broad this time round, but I have to say that I do not use a thesaurus. Anyway, you know the drill, please read, enjoy, and review :) Love you guys :) (Oh and will someone write me some Janny fluff to cheer me up, and everyone else, after the spoiler today? Pretty please?) **

Around her, time had stopped.

Time had never been constant, and yet all five forms experienced nothing more than the preliminary shock for what could have been hours. Never before had they been galvanised into such a state, but then never before had they come across such a satanic, chthonic deity as this creature, this former nurse.

Noticeable under the limited sound were crashes of blundering footsteps. At last, the culprit slid into view, ragged and dishevelled.

"Jesus Christ, you're alive!" Harry exclaimed, unaware of the putrid walker.

Her jaws closed around his arm tight, splintering bone and severing blood vessels; now the jagged edge of torn tissue hung limply like an unmanned flag, only the plasma splatters as an illustrious symbol. Shock remained unregistered before Harry succumbed to eternal death, eyes devoid of any recognisable emotion albeit the plenum of pure hatred. He knew nothing any longer - his awareness was eradicated as he rejoiced in what he had become.

An animal.

Sordid and stinking, he was merely a beast - he was cured of all his middle-class sensibilities, his anxieties were no more a burden.

Staring it down, Jonny's thoughts raced ahead to fifty different permutations of what he must do.

"Run." He chose one and shook off the looks that the word resulted in. Frenzied hands lurched forwards. "Now would be a good idea."

And with that, the world uncoiled and shot back to speed.

They pelted through the corridor, veered around the corner, taking no heed of the severed head hung up on the wall like a demented hunting trophy, taking no heed of the mounting torrent of fear, and taking no heed of their likeness to human catapults, sprung by adrenaline. What did catch their focus, however, was the soft twang that spilled into the atmosphere; it emanated from somewhere north, its tone feminine yet metallic in texture.

The lift was still operational!

Off their own mutual volition, they sprang for it; the nurse clambered for the panel and struck the button repeatedly. The walker gained a distance, now firmly with a devilish aura. The door was too slow, far too slow.

"Come on. Come on!" Jonny demanded compliance from the machine. With a shuddering clank, the doors began to gradually budge like those brutes had done, cutting off the nurses' eye line.

They snapped the revenant's arm; it crunched between the heavy clumps of metal, still straining for flesh. The group retreated, backs pressed into the end of the lift as neither one wanted to near the moving piece of body.

"Get it away, Jonny Mac! Quickly!" Mo squealed.

The nurse yanked at the arm, wrestling with it, and eventually, with an erratic crack, tore it from its socket. It landed amongst their feet, convulsing.

Jonny booted the twitching limb, punting it with his toe. "Holy crap."

"That was...insane," Sacha breathed out, regaining the use of his vocal chords.

Jac almost snorted at the madness of it all. "Insane? It was bloody ludicrous!"

Mo twisted on her. "Oh come on, Jac, you were there! They didn't do it with mirrors!"

Incredulous, the consultant drew herself up high. "You're seriously telling me that you've been drawn into this bull? Wow, I know they say ignorance is bliss, but don't you think you're milking it a little this time?"

"How can you say that? You have eyes, you saw what happened!"

"Give the girl a gold star for her starling knowledge of human anatomy," Jac drawled jadedly.

Jonny sighed. "Mo's being serious, Jac. Those people, they ain't people anymore."

Those words they let loiter within the quiet; they pressed down on their shoulders, reality at its most horrible.

The doors slid open, yet Keller was no creator of noise like they had supposed. No, the muffled daily chatter drew them forward, the normality tumbling upon them: the patients lounged on their beds, the white walls were untainted, and the atmosphere was light, ordinary, and waiting for a catalyst to create fear.

And that catalyst would be on his way, turned like the others.

Jac found herself smirking conceitedly at the dullness. "See, what did I tell you?"

And then the staff room door splintered, sending fragments of wood their way like the shrapnel of war and a figure emerged, staggered, fell, towards them. His coarse hands slithered down the consultant's arm, trying to find a hold; his jaw had been ripped out of place and blood trickled down its serrated edge. She clawed at her attacker's scrubs, each blow puncturing the air with a crack as it met what was left of his skin; it peeled away, skinned by her nails.

The nurse threw a kick to the creature's shin, and, as the beast reeled away, Jac looked upon him for the first time.

Arthur.

But he wasn't Arthur anymore.

She could have recognised him in an instant, but in her haste to be freed, her body had overtaken her mind and defended herself. A few gasps around her told her that her colleagues had realised what the F1 had become as well as she had.

"Jesus." Mo chose to vent all their feelings.

They retreated, they retreated as fast as they could, dodging the lurching arms of Ric, and blasting into the next available door, sealing the entrance with a chair.

Jonny buckled to his knees, cursing. Hanssen's office. They had locked themselves in Hanssen's office.

And the shuffle from behind informed them that they were not alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello again guys. I'm terribly sorry about the wait, but, to make up for it, this chapter is double the length of the last, and the language has been toned down! :) Oh and I realise that I have used two characters that are not in the show any longer, however they were needed for the story, so I hope you'll forgive me for that. This chapter is mostly dialogue, which is why I posted it as one so we can move onto the action after. Oh and Hanssen and Serena will have a generous inclusion in this story, so I hope you like them as much as the others! :)**

**Anyway, as always, read, enjoy, and please review! Thank you.**

* * *

Almost at once, he revealed himself to them.

His eyes were what startled them; they were dull beyond the point of believability, yet so... alive. They were not resistant and inert, not like the obstinate rolling over of a heavy sleeper after he has been called to get up, but their movements were swift and attentive as the great Swede took them in.

His companion wore a look of complete puzzlement rather brilliantly, mouth open without a thought to close it.

Only then did they consider their sudden appearance with a clear head: Sacha seemed aghast, Mo's eyes were wide with shock, Jac took to staring straight ahead with almost no visible feeling, and Jonny began to babble copiously, in which he couldn't help but sound raving mad.

"Could someone please explain why on earth four members of staff have barged into my office without so much as a memo?" Hanssen demanded, lifting himself from his chair.

Jonny opted to break the news. "There's been a wee infestation..."

"Of staff members in my office? Yes, I was witness to the discourtesy," Henrik quipped, already tiring.

Jonny appeared to be as vacant in that room as the walking deceased were in their minds. "Well, maybe not a wee infestation more than a massive, ginormous one..."

"Oh just spit it out, Nurse Maconie - before my shift ends would be preferable." Serena entered the amorphous topic of conversation with a glare; the nurse quivered.

He breathed out, "The whole hospital has turned into brain-eating, blood sucking zombies. We've just legged it from Darwin. Jeez, was there blood. It's an apocalypse, like 2012 but without the volcano... and John Cusack. Without a lot of things, actually. And I know I'm going to heaven, but I can't say the same for these guys, so we'd rather not die right now, which is why we'd appreciate a wee stay in your office? I like my organs where they are, and I'm sure Ms Naylor would agree." The words came out in a tumble, and there was a pause before he joked aloud, "Let's hope the asylum don't have any free beds."

All focus remained fixed upon Hanssen; he nudged his bottom onto his desk, pressing his feet against the chair.

After a while, he spoke. "What a fascinatingly intricate tale, and told with the ignorance of a plastic surgeon. I think it's innovative, wonderful. Publishers will be after you in their thousands. I think the only thing missing, really, is Professor Hope mutating into a wolf at the sight of the moon, and unicorns cavorting wildly through the hospital grounds." He could summon sarcasm like one could a servant. It was immediate, and it was cutting.

Mo bristled irritably. "Look, Mr Hanssen, I'm not being funny, but my Scottish friend over there isn't barking, he's right."

"Humouring his wild fantasies will get you nowhere, Ms Effanga." He disregarded her claims with cold words.

"Whereas actually checking your CCTV _will_." Jac emerged from her silent trance, arms crossed and eyes reproachful.

Hanssen drew forward his spine as he leant. "Are you accusing me of negligence, Ms Naylor?"

Jac threw her hands in the air exasperatedly. "Oh god, does it take surgical intervention to get it into your head that, as ludicrous as it may seem to you, we are telling the truth? I just saw one of our own being torn apart limb from limb, right in front of me. You don't get to stand there and say it never happened, because I know damn well it did. So, yes, have a gold star for your observational skills, because you _were_ careless, lounging here playing the big cheese, buried under your paperwork, when right under your nose people were dying. Well wake up and smell the coffee - mortality rates will be through the roof," she prepared her next sentence as a sardonic drawl, "Congratulations, the little schemes you had going were a huge success." She took a moment to survey her impact, the way her superiors were unsure, still. "Now, why don't you make it right and check your bloody CCTV? You really don't want to piss off a pregnant woman, trust me."

There was a moment when the outcome was versatile, until Hanssen swept towards the master computer, fingers darting over the keys as if they were searing his skin. The screen split into four, each section of black replaced by a grimy image of each ward, a grimy image of the massacre.

"It seems that we have a problem," Hanssen announced, stoically in manner. However, in fact, if anyone were to look close enough, they would see the cracks to his demeanour.

Serena moved to join him, dubious incarnate. "You can't be serious? Please tell me you haven't been sucked into all this? It's utter nonsense if ever I heard it." She was as close as to be able to feel his breath on her neck as she twisted to capture the screen in her sights.

Everyone had died.

Everyone had died, and yet they were still walking.

Serena felt an unfamiliar wetness at the back of her eyes. Her colleagues - Mary-Claire, Chrissie, Gemma - were nothing more than simple beasts. They were once active, alive, and now they scoured those capillaries of corridors for human flesh - this terrible scourge of sorts obliterated their future, their prospects. This was far too real. It sickened her, it sickened them. This wasn't supposed to happen, this was supposed to be an average day - a battle with Hanssen, and then a scrap with Eleanor, followed by a slow draining of wine.

"That can't be real. It just can't." Serena fell short on her counter argument and tussled with the temptation to recoil, to abandon her responsibilities. Hanssen allowed himself a light touch on her arm, patting to rid of the blow.

"Darwin was the centre of the outbreak, correct?" The gangly chief never once thought to take his eyes off the screen - it had is sole concentration.

Sacha frowned. "How do you-"

"Observation, Mr Levy. The key to any good doctor is matchless observation. Take the distribution of fatalities - Darwin's death rate is at one hundred percent, spare those who thought it right to hide out in my office, whereas this pestilence has yet to incapacitate the whole of Keller. So, therefore, what conclusion must we arrive at?" He lectured his inferior like an outmoded professor.

"That Darwin was the centre of the outbreak," Sacha repeated.

Hanssen drew his head into a nod. "Very good, almost professorial in fact. So, now we land at the most pressing conundrum: as to why? Perhaps we can answer this through the simple process of elimination. Tell me, did anything out of the ordinary happen this morning gone?"

"Jac was in one of her saintly moods and bought everyone coffee. If that's not freaky, I don't know what is," Mo suggested plainly.

The consultant's infuriated glare snapped to her as if that act was some ignominious accident. "One more word out of you-"

Mo had the temerity to cut across her. "And you'll do what? Freeze me with an icy stare?"

"That's quite enough, ladies." Serena was the first to intervene. "I'm sure we don't want the mortality rate to bounce even higher now, do we?"

There were a few instants of effusive distaste, mutual with both women; a causative factor of the subsequent scowls.

"There were brownies." A quiet mumble was cast forward as all hitched their eyes towards the perpetrator, baffled, expectant.

"I'm sorry?" Serena took it upon herself to reach clarity.

Jac groaned. "Oh god, you're not still pining over them are you? Believe it or not, your chocolate fetish isn't entirely relevant right now, sorry to burst your little sugar coma."

Her words were not in the slightest reward with heed; Jonny paced, fronting the others save the two managers. "Professor Hope brought up some brownies. They were new - they weren't even on the menu. AAU had their share too, before they ran out-"

Hanssen disrupted the nurse's cornucopia of revelation. "You're suggesting that our own catering staff attempted to poison us?"

"No, I'm suggesting that our own catering staff did poison us. Think about it - none of us had any, and that's the only thing that's changed. It makes sense."

Time skulked past, donning the demented reluctance of their acceptance of the current situation; it creaked over another clock number as they joined in the solemn silence. They were in denial.

Hanssen and Serena still occupied matching personal space, together in a frozen web of terror and loyalty. He was devoid of control, and hated that, hated that he couldn't help, he couldn't save everybody. What sort of a doctor was he if he couldn't even protect his own work-force? His hand still rested comfortably on Serena's arm, not even twitching at the physical contact.

Inwardly parallel to one another, Jonny and Mo bonded their strength, leaning on the other for support, both physically and mentally.

Jac, however, stood solitary, lone, coping, or not, how she had always done. Her detached stance made quick work of her raging hormones; she could only conjure up worst-case scenarios, her baby featuring in most, unpleasantly so. As a matter of fact, however, she found herself not only immersed in constant worry for her child, but, although she couldn't fathom why, the father of her precious cargo. The baby grow smuggled neatly into her rear pocket was now a dead-weight, catalytic to the emergent surge of fear.

Suddenly, movement on the screen stirred awake their minds. The hospital entrance swam to their attention; two black figures penetrated the glut of hell.

"Oh dear god," Serena muttered.

At once, her colleagues hustled to join her, squeezing into a constrictive throng of bodies before the computer.

It took them one, two, seconds to comprehend the quandary, the way in a few moments their dread mutated into an all-consuming torrent of feeling, like some hazardous virus spawned by the senses.

Those two people, those two exposed, defenceless people were unaware of the danger, the threat to their lives.

Oliver and Tara maintained a steady gait, before seating themselves in the cafe chairs.

Adrenaline pumped through them, such adrenaline that one would only have felt at the forefront of an army ambulance, racing to terror victims. Sacha tore their make-shift barricade from the door; it landed with a appalling snap onto the floor, smashing in an instant.

Serena hissed, "What the hell are you doing?"

"It appears that the lunatics are breaking out of the asylum." Hanssen studied them carefully, making no effort to move.

"They're going to walk right into the slaughter house if we don't stop them," Sacha urged brusquely.

Jac forced him to pause; she thwarted his plan by barging her way before his route. "And you plan on doing what? Hug the things to death?"

"No, he won't. I will." Jonny stepped forward, looking hard at the consultant.

She didn't budge. "You are joking? You wouldn't know a martial art move if it hit you in the balls and you conked out on the sofa."

"The last time I checked, karate wasn't on my remit."

"Exactly, Jonny Mac - you'll get yourself killed." Mo's tone was almost a beg.

"Oh come on, Mo. I'll be fine. All the years of playing Xbox has lead to this moment. Now, no arguments - I'm going and that's final. See ya in ten."

His confidence carted him through the doorway, and, with one look left and one look right, he hitched himself along the wall and began to scoot across it, resisting the urge to morph his hands into a gun of sorts.

Inside, the consultant tapped her foot tensely, in an effort to suck some control from the rhythm; beat after beat past without change, before she could not take any more. She slipped between the bodies and slid after him.

Serena clicked her tongue. "Oh great, perfect. I wouldn't have had Ms Naylor down as being that stupid."

Hanssen mellowed, and spoke: "One is very crazy when in love - Sigmund Freud."


	4. Chapter 4

**First of all, I am so so so so so so so sorry I haven't updated for AGES - exams just took up all of my time! I'm going to try and update sooner. Also, I apologise for the copious amount of speech in this chapter and the crappiness of the writing. I know it's a bit dire, but there's more action in the next chapter - this is a bit of a filler. So, anyway, enjoy and please review! (Oh and I know hospitals probably don't switch off their back-up generator, but I needed it for the story :P). :D xx**

* * *

The room was suffocating. The copious amount of bodies seemed to shrivel the area, the walls a collapsing concave like a red-blood cell. Claustrophobia clawed away at them like those few revenants tearing at the outside walls. They had taken the shroud of silence with acceptance and broadened its designated timeline; no one had a word to say. No one knew what to say.

They allowed a few moments of grave eye contact, sharing some sort of communication with one another.

"We need to get out of here." Oliver uttered.

"Jeez thanks, Valentine. That's an innovative idea. Why didn't we think of that?" Jac said in admitted defeat.

Oliver ignored her. "If we could bypass the things, it would be a clear straight to the stairs."

Serena nodded her agreement. "Are they still out there?"

Jonny stuck his out of the door, craning his neck. "Looks like the coast is clear, though I'm betting the corridor through there's rife with the things - it ain't looking all that pretty."

Oliver groaned. "What about the back route? See anything?"

The nurse turned back to them. "I'll take a look around, see if there's a way out." He shifted his chest out in an act to showcase his apparent masculinity.

"I already have enough paperwork without the pile that will come with your imminent and avoidable demise," Hanssen disrupted the nurse's audacious, yet foolish, plan. "Mr Levy, you will accompany myself and Nurse Maconie to the exit. That way, the job in hand will be done in triple the speed and without any inconvenient fatalities. Agreed?" He allowed no time for protestations. "Good."

They found themselves in motion, quivering, as the door was hauled open, the magnificent beast slit by contours of light. Consecutively, they slipped between its jaws, subjected to the odour of the dead almost immediately. They chanced a look left, a look right, before ascending down the corridor, hackles undulating with adrenaline.

A few minutes went past unbeknown to them; their internal processes were working in overdrive, too concentrated on sight than on body clocks.

They were far away from the office door now; they had passed a corridor perpendicular to theirs, leaving it unchecked.

There was a thump. Tens of patients streamed out from the passageway, cutting them off from the office door, isolating them from the others. The masses moaned, sodden flesh soiled with blood.

"Shitting hell!" Jonny exclaimed, struck by the situation.

Despite everything, Hanssen procured a disapproving eyebrow.

Those who had remained behind emerged from the office, bored of the wait.

Serena grumbled, "What in gods name is taking you so lo-"

And then the scene engulfed them, how they were separated by revenants, how grim their position was.

Jonny barked, jumpily switching to his toes, "Go, go, go, go, go! Now!"

And before they knew it, they were running in opposite directions, falling through the maze of walkways and wards, concrete and glass, dead and un-dead. Only they didn't have each other any longer. They didn't have that precious strength in numbers that was the difference between life and demise.

The three men skidded to a halt, breathing in episodic gasps, bent at the knees and elbows perpendicular to the ground. An eerie ringing, which was somewhat out of place, screeched out from the confines of Hanssen's suit.

His hand swallowed the phone, and he snapped it to his ear. "Mr Hanssen?"

"Hey, this is Michael Spence from Keller theatre." Only then did Hanssen exhale the breath he had no idea he was holding. "My three o'clock's flatlined so we're wrapping up."

The idiot had no idea. "Mr Spence..." Hanssen sought to make that right.

Michael continued, arm deep in cavity. "There's a space for your appendectomy and I'd grab it with both hands if I were you because the old bag's looking to sue if you don't hurry-"

"Mr Spence! Shut up this instant!" The CEO instantly regretted his amplitude, but the matter in hand was more pressing. Immediately, Michael dropped the subject. "Thank you. There's been a major incident and I need you to vacate the theatres immediately."

The consultant's interest spiked. "What's happening? RTA pileup? How many dead?"

"All but us."

Michael guffawed. "All but you guys? April Fools isn't till next year, Mr Hanssen."

In the gloom of the theatre, the dead patient twitched. Michael aimed an exasperated glare at Malick. "Seems like you weren't the only ones who didn't get the message..."

And then a hand shot up, squeezing Malick's windpipe between iron-like fists; he struggled for breath, clawing at the thing's fingers, internal organs dropping onto the floor as it wrenched itself up.

And then it snapped his neck.

The consultant's mouth went dry. "What the hell?!" Michael recoiled, ripping off his gloves.

There was a crackle from the phone. "This is the part where you run, Mr Spence. So run." Hanssen drew a sigh. "Good luck."

Sacha looked towards the older man. "Anything?"

"The pathogen is now airborne." The weighty announcement was carried off by the moans of the nearing dead; Hanssen internally counted to five to quieten his pulse.

Jonny wiped his mouth with his hand. "This has gone to far. Call in the army, blow the things to shreds!"

"One word from you and all of my staff will be sectioned. And where would that leave us I wonder?"

Sacha's nerves were on edge. "It's worth a try isn't it?"

Hanssen took his time to arrive at a decision; he was cautious, collected, before clicking his back, for it had become stiff with tension, and bowing his head in agreement. "Who am I to argue with the general consensus, however foolish?"

And then his mobile breathed its last, blinking, convulsing; it blacked out and died.

* * *

As did the lights.

Serena groaned. "There goes the electricity."

"Don't sweat it - the backup generator should kick in soon," Mo reassured her, ogling the darkness tentatively.

"The backup generator is otherwise incapacitated after a run in with a fruit loop hysterectomy. It was hanging on a thread so we made the decision to switch it off. It took the Hubble Space Telescope to track down an electrician and the only time he wasn't booked was tomorrow."

Frowning, Tara exclaimed, "So that's it? We're on our own?"

"As a leper."

Oliver rounded on the group. "We can't just stay here like sitting ducks. We need to find a base, somewhere secure..." Electric-like, it hit him. "The morgue."

Mo crumpled at the words. "The morgue?" Said place was the purgatory of the hospital, the room of surgical failures, medical impossibilities, and the natural end of life.

"It was updated. The doors are heavy, the walls are thick and it's isolated from the rest of the hospital. That's our best bet," Oliver insisted.

All seemed to be in mutual, if reluctant, agreement. Little did they know that that reluctance was justified as the pathogen spread, mutating at a terrific rate.

Little did they know that, while they conversed, the corpses were sluggishly twitching.

"Come on, let's go." And then Oliver lead them into false safety.

**TO BE CONTINUED**


End file.
